Former Steam boss Jason Holtman lands at Microsoft  —  Valve veteran will be focused on “making Windows a great platform for gaming”  —  Jason Holtman, who spearheaded Valve's Steam business for eight years before leaving the company in February, has a new job.

Yes, Gmail users have an expectation of privacy  —  Sending email to Gmail users means you expect Google's servers will process it  —  Consumer groups are up in arms today over a motion Google made in June to dismiss a class-action lawsuit alleging that Gmail violates federal …

Q&A: Lenovo CEO on Smartphones and BlackBerry  —  China's Lenovo Group Ltd. is outperforming its peers in the struggling personal-computer industry.  The world's largest PC vendor said Thursday that it posted a 23% rise in net profit and a 9.7% rise in revenue in its fiscal first quarter through June, beating analysts' expectations.

iCloud.com beta updated with iOS 7 design  —  The beta.icloud.com website has been redesigned to match the design of iOS 7.  Removing the linen and other Forstall-era design elements, this is the first display of Apple bringing iOS 7 design elements to the web.

They don't make Windows like they used to  —  Summary: Microsoft is making the Windows sausage differently these days.  And that impacts everything from how products are tested, to how they're launched and updated.  —  Microsoft announced on August 14 that it will be launching Windows 8.1 on October 18, 2013.

Google Search Gets More Personal, Now Lets You Find Your Flight Info, Reservations, Photos And More  —  Google today announced a number of search features that make it easier for you to find your own personal information through Google Search.  The search engine can now find information …

Samsung announces the Hennessy, a dual-screen, quad-core Android flip phone  —  When you think of smartphones, the image of a sleek, minimalist slab is probably what comes to mind.  But how about a flip phone?  Now there's a form factor you don't see everyday - at least, not on any phone that's powered by Google.

How A ‘Deviant’ Philosopher Built Palantir, A CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut  —  Since rumors began to spread that a startup called Palantir helped to kill Osama bin Laden, Alex Karp hasn't had much time to himself.  —  On one sun-baked July morning in Silicon Valley Palantir's lean 45 …

Facebook's trillion-edge, Hadoop-based and open source graph-processing engine  —  People following the open source Giraph project likely know that Facebook was experimenting with it, and on Wednesday the company detailed just how heavily it's leaning on Giraph.

Twitter Is Testing Out A New ‘TV Trending’ Box At The Top Of Your Timeline  —  Twitter is betting big on TV, both as a source of traffic and as a potential source of lucrative advertising revenue.  And that's leading the company to test out new ways of bringing even more TV content — and traffic — to its platform.

Amazon's Silk Web Browser Gets A Whole New Look  —  Amazon's Silk web browser, which comes built into Kindle Fire devices, has received its first major upgrade since September 2012, the company announced today.  Though there have been steady under-the-hood improvements over time …

eBay launches “My Gadgets”, an easy way to catalog, value and one day sell your gadgets  —  Today, online auction marketplace eBay launched a new product called “My Gadgets” that it says will let users catalog the tech devices they have and appraise them should they wish to sell any later.

Meet The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Man Behind Booming Black Market Drug Website Silk Road  —  An entrepreneur as professionally careful as the Dread Pirate Roberts doesn't trust instant messaging services.  Forget phones or Skype.  At one point during our eight-month preinterview courtship …

Facebook's Star Manager Peter Deng Becomes Instagram Director Of Product To “Do Fewer Things Better”  —  Peter Deng built Facebook Chat, Groups and Messenger as its product management director for the last six years.  Now he's going to execute the vision of Instagram's founders as its new Director Of Product.

BlackBerry Patent Portfolio Worth $2 Billion to $3 Billion  —  BlackBerry's continuing decline has left it with comparatively little to offer a potential acquirer.  There's a crumbling smartphone business, a too-late-to-market operating system that has failed to capture the imagination …